Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, a.k.a. the “Merchant of Death,” has reportedly moved back into arms dealing just two years after President Joe Biden’s prisoner swap with Russia, trading Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner.
In 2022, the Biden administration offered the Kremlin convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been sentenced to 25 years in U.S. prison for illegal arms trade, in exchange for Griner.
At the time, Biden faced criticism for the swap, with some fearing that Bout’s crimes far too great for the warranting his release. The Biden administration defended the swap by claiming that Bout posed no further security risk to the United States.
However, Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told the Hill at the time Bout could easily become “a threat down the line.”
“So it’s possible that given the fact he’s just an amoral character who basically will sell arms or work with basically anyone, he could work with terrorist groups, and that is a risk,” Ramani said.
John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the swap could further embolden Russia and other governments to take Americans hostage in order to free more prisoners.
“There will be no shortage [of people] that Moscow wants to get back in years to come. I do worry that playing this hostage negotiation game will incentivize them to keep doing it on their end,” said Hardie.
According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Bout may have returned to his former profession by brokering the sale of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.
When Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout, according to a European security official and other people familiar with the matter.
The potential arms transfers, which have yet to be delivered, stop well short of the sale of Russian antiship or anti-air missiles that could pose a significant threat to the U.S. military’s efforts to protect international shipping from the Houthis’ attacks.
The Biden administration has been worried that Russia might provide the Houthis with such advanced weapons to retaliate for Washington’s support of Ukraine, but there is no evidence that those missiles have been sent, or that Bout is involved in such a deal.
Steve Zissou, a New York attorney who represented Bout in the U.S., told the outlet that “Bout has not been in the transportation business for over twenty years”
“But if the Russian government authorized him to facilitate the transfer of arms to one of America’s adversaries, it would be no different than the U.S. government sending arms and weapons of mass destruction to one of Russia’s adversaries as it has sent to Ukraine,” said Zissou.
